One Step Forward, Two Steps Back!

Well, I confirmed and relearned the lesson that posting anything on Facebook other than some bland comment about the weather, or the cute thing your grandchild or your cat did or where you ate dinner, is likely to cause a shit-storm. So....the mistake I made was a comment about my favorite line from a news event over the past week and my thoughts on it.

Probably a good thing I didn't bring up what I thought of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's dissents in two different cases this past week in which the liberal wing of the court won out over the conservative wing.

Had Justice Scalia simply stated his legal reasoning for his dissent it wouldn't have caught my attention but Justice  Scalia went far beyond a simple dissent opinion, slamming the majority with zingers that bordered on personal attacks.   There are few Supreme court cases that end with unanimous decisions...there is almost always a majority opinion and and minority opinion...but what we usually get, or what we have historically gotten and what we should always hope to get from both sides is some semblance of respect and decorum.  Scalia's unhinged attacks on his colleagues smack of partisan politics, not judicious reasoning.

I take special exception to these words from his dissent and I'm calling him out as a common hypocrite.   "A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy."      Scalia seems to have no such opinion when his views fall within the majority opinion on a case.  Just to make this clear, I am not being critical of the fact that Justice Scalia had a different opinion than the majority of the justices but for the tone of his dissent and the blatant hypocrisy slamming our system because it didn't go his way.

I suppose I should cut the man a break...he lost two big ones this past week and he will never leave us in doubt about what his views might be. There is that much.

What got me into Facebook trouble specifically was quoting the following from Jim Wright's blog concerning the broughaha over the Confederate Battle flag.   "The Confederate Battle Flag, that stinking banner of treasonous bigotry".  I followed the quote with a statement that I thought that at the very least that those who fought under it were prime examples of the definition of treason as described in the U. S. Constitution.   There isn't really a lot of argument about the definition of the word treason....although it does get thrown around a lot these days at politicians and others for actions that really don't fit the definition of the crime.

Most definitions of "treason" include the following, "the betrayal of one's own country by waging war against it."     I'm just not really sure how you could argue that the officials and armies of the Confederate States of America were not guilty of treason.

I might as well have hit a hornets nest with a stick...   and yet not a single respondent to my post actually addressed the treason part of the post....first I was informed that both sides thought they were right, which is true....but is it any less Treason because they thought they were "right"?    Then I was reminded that our Founding fathers were also guilty of Treason....which again is true, but again doesn't address the issue of the flag being a symbol of treason,  then I was told the use of the word treason in talking about the Civil War is just semantics....and of course then they bring "states rights" into the discussion and finally I was instructed that the flag everyone is yelling about was not the flag of the CSA but was a military battle flag  ( I thought I had made that clear when I called it the Confederate Battle Flag)  and that just because one idiot waves it around doesn't mean everyone should go crazy over it....and now I'm feeling just sort of swamped....and then it was pointed out that if you wanted to talk about evil people in history "what about Columbus",  The news media won't let it go, etc, etc, etc.  I did agree that the media has way too much air time on their hands and as a result they do tend of obsess on some topics just to fill air time.  In fact I even used the term broughaha in my opening statement to indicate I thought the story was getting more attention than it probably deserves....but that was overlooked.    I decided it was best to just let the whole thread die of natural causes because it was clear I wasn't going to get any clear headed discussion on my initial, narrow comment linking that flag and the word "treason".      

Obviously the Confederate Battle flag is a symbol that represents a lot of different things to a lot of different people... some see it as a symbol of oppression and racial bigotry, some see it as a symbol of Southern pride and tradition and don't associate it with the negative qualities seen by others.  I think a lot of those views were influenced by where you were raised, where you went to school, and who your ancestors were.  I was born and raised in the Midwest, far above the Mason-Dixon line, my ancestors were almost all Yankees...My view of the Civil War were directly influenced by my ancestors who enlisted in the Union Army and went south to keep the Union together and to end slavery, but mainly they joined up because their government called them to do so.   The Blue were the good guys, the Gray were the bad guys.  That's just how I learned history.  Of course the truth is much more complex than that and not nearly so clear cut and of course history is always written by the winners.   Certainly none of us should be held responsible for the sins of our forefathers, but I think we do need to be honest with ourselves and admit that our ancestors were sometimes guilty of some pretty terrible examples of human behavior, i.e., Christopher Columbus and the entire sad history of how Native Americans have been treated since Europeans set foot in North and South America.

Certainly the men pictured below would have had no difficulty in associating the Confederate Battle Flag and the word treason.  I rest my case.

Robert Shearer

Benjamin Rush Moffitt

John Klepinger

John D. Robinson

Jesse W. Robinson

George Carter

Rev. John Robinson